Author

Southern League

A True Story of Baseball, Civil Rights, and the Deep South’s Most Compelling Pennant Race

1964 was a pivotal year in the Civil Rights movement, and in Birmingham, Alabama – perhaps the epicenter of American racial conflict – a remarkable grand experiment was about to take place: Alabama’s first-ever integrated team, the Barons of baseball’s Southern League.

No Ordinary Joes

The Extraordinary True Story of Four Submariners
in War and Love and Life

On April 23, 1943,the seventy-man crew of the USS Grenadierscrambled to save their submarine—and themselves—after a Japanese aerial torpedo sent it crashing to the ocean floor. Miraculously, the men were able to bring the sub back to the surface, only to be captured by the Japanese.

In 1960 they were the winners…and then the rules changed

Idol Time is a profile in the idolatry and mania that surrounds a world championship basketball team, the Portland Trail Blazers.

It follows the players on their journey through the locker rooms and airport terminals of America, as well as a bike trip down the Oregon Coast with the team’s superstar, Bill Walton. Both the idols and their worshippers (or non-worshippers) are profiled.

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Over the last decade, over a thousand authors have spoken at Wordstock, including superstars like Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Dave Eggers, John Irvine and Joyce Carol Oates. We’ve drawn over 150,000 people; we’ve hosted dozens of writing workshops; and we’ve even raised a little money for Community of Writers. Read More

Larry's big league career was on a Tuesday. He pitched two innings against Cincinnati, giving up one run. A few days later, he separated his shoulder and that was the end of his big league career (and the accidental beginning of his writing career). Read More

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Features, Excerpts & Photos

I was off to Atlanta to appear at the Decatur Book Festival, a literary event that boasts of an attendance between 80 and 90 thousand. I was scheduled to speak on a panel with three other writers. Seemed like a long way to go to maybe sell a dozen books…which wouldn’t even cover the cost […]

Features, Excerpts & Photos

As authors we spent endless hours toiling away in our garrets fretting over whether the masses will connect with our words and stories. In breathless anticipation of a book’s release, we imagine reviewers drooling over themselves in praise of our syntax, and fans hustling out of their suburban enclaves to cue up in long lines […]

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Features, Excerpts & Photos

Author’s Introduction In 1966, two years after this story takes place, I was a 23-year-old pitcher for the Macon Peaches in the Southern League, a California boy experiencing the South for the first time. The idea of becoming a writer, let alone writing this book, never occurred to me then, not for a nanosecond. I […]

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Prologue The waters felt unsafe to Bob Palmer. Too shallow. Too close to land. Too risky, given their unreliable torpedoes. But who was he, a twenty-one-year-old, to question the strategy of his submarine captain, a graduate of the Naval Academy and respected by every man on the ship? Palmer worked hard as the sub’s yeoman, […]

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It was a cold, drizzly morning in January 1979. I was 37, supposedly prime time for a man to hit financial and emotional maturity. Instead, I had two ex-wives, two ex-careers (ballplayer and teacher), and a beat-to-shit old Chevy Nova with a broken transmission. Its only gear was reverse. On the bright side, I’d just […]

Features, Excerpts & Photos

Larry Colton has a new book coming out next month, one he’s worked on for almost ten years. Called No Ordinary Joes, it’s his fourth book and, unlike the others, doesn’t rely on Larry being a participant observer in the events he’s writing about to drive the narrative. No Ordinary Joes is about a group […]

Features, Excerpts & Photos

Features, Excerpts & Photos

In December, 1998, Willamette Week published one of Nigel Jaquiss’ first stories for the paper, an interview with Larry Colton about COW. Jaquiss would win a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his reporting on the sexual abuse of a 14 year old girl by former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt. Larry Colton thought his arm would […]

Features, Excerpts & Photos

Features, Excerpts & Photos

As a student at University of California-Berkeley, Larry Colton says, he majored in “girls, beer and basketball.” On a diet now and looking trim, Colton says the beer part doesn’t fit into his lifestyle. And he’s happily married to his second wife. But basketball and sports remain abiding interests. The competitive spirit played a part […]

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This was it, my major-league debut, the precise moment that I had been working toward my whole life, my father’s whole life. I was about to dance the essential moment, to play with the powerful icons of my American dream. For me to be emotionally in control at a time of such dramatic personal intensity […]

Features, Excerpts & Photos

About Larry Colton

After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1964, Larry
Colton played professional baseball for six years, including a brief stint with the
Philadelphia Phillies. Following his baseball career, he has taught high school,
worked for Nike, and been a writer. Between 1976 and 2000, his magazine articles
appeared in publications such as Esquire, New York Times Magazine, Sports
Illustrated and Ladies Home Journal. He is the author of five books: Idol Time;
Goat Brothers (a main selection for the Book of the Month Club); Counting Coup
(winner of the Frankfurt e-book of the year award and a Pulitzer nominee); No
Ordinary Joes; and Southern League. Additionally, he is the founder and former
executive director of two non-profit programs: Community of Writers, a non-
profit program to improve writing instruction and student achievement in Oregon
schools; and Wordstock, the acclaimed Portland Book Festival.